dd_rescue nightmare --- help please
 

Okay, I was using dd_rescue to recover a partition from damaged disc ('/dev/sda2'). It was approximately 50 GB

I setup dd_rescue to write to /dev/sdb1

dd_rescue /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb1

Problem was, /dev/sdb1 had all sorts of important stuff on it. (it's a FAT partition)



I intended to write to /dev/sdb2!

dd_rescue /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb1

I let the damn thing run for almost half an hour before I discovered it.

I need to recover as much as possible - the filenames if at all possible.....

argh

You've been overwriting the data, so much ill be permanently lost.
First you make an image of the affected partition - then you can attempt to use a fat32 recovery program.

A slightly longer response: overwriting data on the /dev/sdb1 partition erased part of the filesystem structure (Wikipedia: File Allocation Table) so unless you can find a backup FAT you won't be able to recover filenames because of missing Directory Tables. All that's left is to (make a backup if unsure and) use Photorec to carve files out for you. Make sure you write out recovered files to a mounted filesystem that is safe to write to.